Blackberry Season

Blackberry season is as fleeting and as capricious as the rush of power a teen first experiences on feeling hormones pulse through their blood like a tribal drumbeat, right before they get grounded for losing the dog. So sweet and potent while it flourishes, so purple-black-dark-sweet and necessary for summer to exist. A marker of time passing, year after year, and a reminder that for all that changes nothing really changes completely. The sun still creeps through the brambles with fire and tells the bees to kneel here, to wait for it, to believe the honey will come.

Riding on the last hot gusts of August the blackberries are the signature fragrance of that complicated loaded moment when summer leans into fall and harvest time with all the urgency of the coming of truth. The denouement of the entire year. The branches grow heavy with their burden.

I sped down country roads on my Vespa with the wind scudding through my shirt, warm and still until I passed through it. Summer air is sensual with promise. The promise of everything good, sweet, rich, and plenty. There were the clouds of delicate wild blackberry perfume I cut through, a kind of dark spicy pillow of warm innocence-like childhood would have been if there was always a band-aid for what ailed you.

Then there was the vinegar scent of spent apples, crushed, bruised, and going sour on the roadsides becoming an accidental elixir of health. From higher up I could smell the still ripening undropped apples like a symphony of sweet-tart dreams of a million Halloweens full of surprise and cinnamon.

All of this is on the air. Fresh mown hay bundled in angular rectangles feeds my eye a pattern, something to think on later. When I'm remembering the blackberries.

Blood.

Every summer I think about blackberries. I dream of them. I wait for them. I make them into jam. I eat them off their thorns. I taste so much in them. The dusky bloom they sometimes wear, (the dust from the road they inevitably line), are part of their charm. They are humble, they are simple, they are scrappy. They bite and tangle and reach for the stars. Like a reflection of the most hopeful sparrows. They never give up. They use their tangles like steps to the moon, without apology, without artifice.

When I'm picking them I lose myself a little to the heat their perfume implies. I taste them and I seek them, pushing aside spiders, webs, thorns, and probably rats as well, pushing through the bramble to get at the berries. I collect them like they are better than diamonds. Better than any other fruit. Their scent reminds me of something. I can never quite grab it straight on.

Summers in Oregon have always been punctuated by blackberry season. Faces smeared purple in the pursuit of ingesting summer to store against winter. The more blackberries you eat, savoring (in large quantities) the delicate black sunshine, the warmer you will be when the wind is smacking your windows with sleet and the memory of those late summer treats vibrate in your blood like juicy fire.

I bled picking them. Down my legs. Oblivious until the hot blood began to drip unceremoniously down my skin. I got it on my fingers too. I become so married to the acquisition of fruit that I feel separate from myself at first and see the blood for what it is- the juice of nature, no different from the juice of the berries I'm picking. Then I shake my head in the sun and see that it is me bleeding. I have been very far away.

It makes trails for new thoughts. I turn to see where they will go.

Why should people not bleed for their food? It seems natural when I am walking in the brambles, caught, squeezing into the thorns like a jigsaw of flesh in nature. I start thinking about people having this idea that we have the right to everything we need. I start thinking about how people are always looking for the easy way. They want eating to be easy. Because they view it as an inalienable right. If this was true there would be no starving people.

I start thinking about how life is a gift. All things that follow it, right up until death, are also a gift. They are a gift, not a right. Those of us who are living are lucky to be alive. Lucky to have things to complain about. Lord knows, I think to myself, I sure do take advantage of that. There are no miracles and no rights. There is only life pounding its way inexorably towards death. Even death is a gift. Though no one wants to see that because no one wants to get there.

I reach into the shadows to pluck berries back into the light, into my box. I am alone with my reflections. The air is heavy with my prey. The blackberries bleed for me and I for them. Life as it should be. Why shouldn't I have to pay for my sustenance with a little piece of myself? Why should eating be easy? Why should life be easy? I ask myself.

Blackberry picking is a charitable activity. It affords me the time to be grateful. Even when life seems to suck and be scary in so many ways, there is still this magic. Picking makes time stop. The bees are swarming the sugar, the air is holding close to everything because it will move on soon. I find myself flooded with love. A sentimental fool bleeding in the brambles.

For so many years I dreamed of coming back to Oregon, to pick blackberries as I did when I was a kid. So when I'm out there grabbing at what is left of blackberry season I find myself feeling complete. I feel Lithia creek cooling my feet, I see ice cream cones melting on the street, I taste that berry juice in my mouth like purple joy, and all the ghosts I carry on my shoulders fade into the canopy of leaves above me while I shut my eyes so that I might taste the summer just a minute longer.

A summer that has become pregnant with the bite of fall.

Blackberry season is almost over. I barely caught it.

Accursed Heat Wave

OK. I'm done with the stupid heat. Done. I can live without tomatoes* and eggplants. I am asking myself: why didn't I move to Canada or Alaska? Surely it isn't 90 degrees all night long there in the summer? 90 degrees might not sound that bad to some of you heat loving freaks out there, but after a three digit day all you want is for a cool breeze to come and bring the night air down to a comfortable 60 degrees. That's all you want.

But when it was 105 all day and then you try to sleep in a stew pot of human flesh and fur in air that stays steady and breeze-less all night at 90 degrees...it's enough to make me want to rip my own skin off so that my soul can sit around in its birthday suit unfettered.

It's going to be hot today too. Which means another night of no sleep. We've already had two steaming hot no-sleep nights and I'm not sure our fragile family unit can take another one.

I know Max and I went downstairs for some water at around 4am but apparently he was wondering the house by himself around 3am too.

In other slightly less cranky news... Penny and Pippa are getting their reproductive organs tampered with today so that they can't make cute little babies. I wonder if I had asked to get myself spayed with them if we could have gotten a discount?


Update: The kittens are home and feeling under the weather. Plus it's still flippin' HOT. We tried our air conditioning but I don't think it works because after two hours with it on it has only dropped from 91 degrees inside the house to 89 degrees. I'm sweating delightful buckets of sweat. Gorgeous sunset though. And we ate a wonderful salad with Sungold tomatoes and steamed potatoes I grew on my plot at the community garden, green beans, some cheese, lettuce, cold lentil salad, and a hard boiled egg. I ate it too fast to get a picture. Anyway, looks like another close suffocating night here at the farmhouse. I hope yours will be cooler!!!



*GASP!!!

Hot Like Sweat

I seem to sweat a lot. Sweat is not sexy. Not on you either. Oh yeah, I was raised by proper hippies and I know it's completely "natural" and therefore a benign force of the universe. You can say the same thing about shit but no one wants to be dripping with that, do they? See what I mean? The weirdest thing is how sometimes my sweat smells and sometimes it doesn't. Why is that? I forgot to apply my deodorant this morning.* I didn't remember that I forgot it until I was drenched and dabbing myself dry with paper towels at work.

Yeah, I could have let it flow all natural style. I could have.

But I couldn't help thinking that customers might be put off if the sales clerk splashed them with sweat when turning her friendly face to greet them. I couldn't help thinking that a person like me, with a sweat streamed nose, might look more like a seedy desperado in a dusty hot western B movie than a delicate DRY flower of a lady. Who never swears. Ha ha.

I just gave my pits the sniff test (essential on days like this) and there is no off-putting acrid smell there. How can that be? I wonder if my sweat only smells when it's the sweat-of-fear? I have lots of sweat like that when I'm in uncomfortable social situations. Which is most of them.

On the other hand, the shirt I'm wearing is one of those cheap but surprisingly well made cotton ones you rarely find at Ross and are therefore super-stoked when you do and buy seven of the same one, well, the one I'm wearing today is about three years old and believe it or not, fibers don't last forever. Not these days they don't. What happens to old cotton knits that have a little bit of Lycra in it is that the fibers wear out. There comes a day when they just won't get fresh in the wash. They start to smell like unwashed skin. Yep. UNWASHED SKIN.

You might be interested (or not?) to know that I have a very sensitive nose. Towels eventually get to this point and I find it incredibly distressing to dry myself off with a piece of material that smells WORSE than I did before I washed myself.

That's what my shirt smells like. It makes me sad because it's been my favorite shirt for three years. That's why I have seven of the same one. All of them are the same age.

It continues to be very hot here in McMinnville. Tomorrow promises to be hot too. And I'm going to be canning dill pickles right after stooping over to pick them under the blazing sun. Obviously I'll be wearing sun screen. And a whole crap load more of my own sweat (which is certainly a lot better than wearing a crap load of someone else's sweat).

Someone once told me she thought man-sweat was sexy. I think my jaw may have dropped open and invited a flock of seagulls to land in it. She said she thought it was very "manly". Isn't it possible to be "manly" without stinking like a bitter stew of old nuts? What's wrong with deodorant? What's wrong with not smelling at all? Or how about just smelling like soap? I love the smell of soap!

Paris Hilton's namesake perfume is much worse than the smell of sweat because it smells like cheap aged urine.

So if it comes down to a choice between being engulfed in the smell of sweat or the smell of Paris Hilton's perfume I'm going to choose the sweat smell.

I wonder what my dog would choose?





*Tom's of Maine lavender. Supposedly natural but now owned by Crest or some other huge corporation. Dammit. I hate that.

So Long Henna
(and thanks for all the eggs!)

Henna is the dark reddish brown hen third from the left.

The day opened with a blanket of heat over the city. From there on the day just got worse. I know so many people who are really happy to have the heat here ("at last") but I am not one of them for the following reasons:

Heat makes people more likely to kill other people.

I don't like heat rashes and I've got a real nice one under my boobs right now.

It makes my animals extremely uncomfortable.

Iced coffee isn't nearly as nice a way to wake up as hot coffee.

It makes people sweat. I don't know anyone who wears sweat attractively.

It makes people smell. Because of the sweat.

Plus other malodorous things get really ripe in the heat.

In spite of the heat I was enjoying a little moment of complete contentedness with my house and chatting with my sister who is coming with us in the hot-box* to California tomorrow. All was well in spite of the skin blistering sunshine until Philip came in and told me that our hen named Henna had died.

I don't like it when my chickens die. What's worse is that she died of a mysterious cause. We don't know why. I am thankful that she didn't die from being mauled by a wild beast. But I am so sad to lose one of my girls. She was such a hard worker and such a lovely hen. Chickens are not Olympian animals with really long lifespans so if you keep them you must get used to losing them from time to time.

Philip buried her in the yard. So begins the pet cemetery at the new house. We are leaving and now I'm worried to leave my other girls behind. A good friend is going to care for them and the house but what if I come back to no hens?

I have to get up ridiculously early so I am going to simply say that I hope you all are staying cool and if the next time you see me I'm turned inside out, pay no mind.

Goodbye Henna. Thanks for all the eggs and the excellent company. You will be missed by your family and your flock. We send you love to whatever place chicken spirits go when they die. May you feast on a thousand snails a day and never have to lay another damn egg!

*the car

Jamming On The Breaks

Peach jam is so good. I can eat up one jar in just a few days.

I took my first ever drug test yesterday. Provided that Safeway doesn't find out that I'm on crack, I have a job. I was amused with myself for not being sure I would pass the drug test. I mean, I know that I have not done any drugs in the past nineteen years because drugs totally suck. I know for a fact that I have never done crack. So I know that I have no cocaine or heroine or pot in my system. So why the reservation? Even if Safeway is waiting for official confirmation of my drug free status, surely I can be sure I have the job?

Just goes to show you how suspicious I have become about opportunity and how it doesn't come my way without barbs anymore. I am a faithless one. Well, Safeway seems like a much better place to work than Joann's Fabric, but they don't start you off with good pay, in case anyone was wondering. It's union, so if you put in enough hours you will certainly get raises, but the start pay is just about as dismal as anywhere else. But, with so few opportunities on the horizon I don't have a right to complain. So, I start training this Saturday.

Just to let you all know, I submitted a book proposal to Lark and I'm sure that if anything I submit gets accepted I will not be allowed to discuss any details...but it should be safe to say that the editor who got my proposal is giving it a good look. If she likes it she may take it to the Acquisitions committee. I won't know anything for at least a month. But I am proud of myself for finally knuckling down and putting it all together. I felt really good about what I sent and it all suddenly seemed so clear to me how it would look, what the projects would be and how to present it.

I'm going to need to find out some industry details such as: if you've mentioned that you have a couple of other ideas to an editor and they say they are already doing a similar project and won't pursue them, can you take it to a different publisher? Even if the first publisher might be considering one of your proposals? I mean, working with different publishers at the same time who might be competitors...is that frowned on? Do you wait until you're through dealing with one completely before approaching another?

Yesterday I came up with another idea. I don't have a lot of cutting edge craft ideas. The publishers want new fresh material and most of what I do can only be described as new and fresh because of the personal style I impose on my projects, the projects themselves aren't anything new. To publish a book of crafts that aren't really fresh but whose strength lies in the unique styling is generally reserved for crafters and designers who already have a known name with which to sell their book. There is one craft I do that I still don't see a lot of around the craft world but which I think is pretty great. I'm not going to tell you what it is, instead I'm going to turn all cagey and secretive on you.

I promise it's only because I need to do some market research. If I want to propel myself out of the situation we've been in I had better get serious about proposing book ideas to publishers. All my life everything has come back to the writing. I have, so many times, made a push to get serious (code for: get published) and so many times I would find that I wasn't ready for it. My skills weren't honed enough. I didn't know what my purpose was. My goal. A writer needs a goal; to tell stories if they are fiction writers. But if you suck at writing fiction and only one in one thousand poems is any good but you clearly have a gift with words...what do you do with it? Where do you take it?

I know now what my nonfiction voice is. It's evident all over this blog. But before I can convince someone to publish my essays, I had better develop a better portfolio of published works. Who will buy a book by an unknown writer spouting off a bunch of random opinions? I have finally actually figured out where to start with the serious creative nonfiction. It's difficult because I don't want to write a memoir exactly. I don't want to write anything that will heavily involve my family who, I don't believe, is ready to be written about. Too much raw feeling still lives in that part of the past. There was a part of my past though that has a provides a rich thick layer of tales to tell and queer light through which to see a life opening up.

The two years I went to FIDM between the ages of seventeen and nineteen. I was mostly disconnected from my family. The stories really don't involve them. It was a time during which I had an epiphany and then the usual anticlimax that follows big moments of enlightenment.

I will start working on that and let it flesh itself out as I go along. In the mean time I will work on my book proposal writing and pitching skills with craft books. Whatever I have in me that's worth presenting I will present. I think I've got three strong titles in me.

Personally, I think publishers and editors will find that while I'm a rather large personality, I'm not at all a diva to work with. I'm very professional. I know I don't sound like a very professional person on my own blog. That's because this is MY CLUB HOUSE AND I CAN EAT CHEESE ALL DAY IF I WANT TO AND CRY INTO MY BEER...

...and wonder what the hell is going on with the Danny/Lindsy plot on CSI? I'm irritated that Lindsy is suddenly turning into a person with issues that prevent her from being decent to Danny who really likes her, and she must be a real dumb nut not to see that he's an awesome guy.

Summer is knocking me flat. It isn't hot weather, because we haven't had much of that. It's the kid being out of school. My friends who home-school are made of much sterner and more maternal material than me. It's only been a week so far and I am just about ready to claw holes in the plaster walls out of frustration. I want some peace. I think writers don't necessarily make the best parenting material. I want to concentrate on my projects like getting a job and writing but the kid wants me to play legos, watch movies, watch him play video games, and is constantly in need of something from me.

Max is signed up with a summer day camp which starts in a week. I hope we're all still alive by then. I may be buried in the back yard under my favorite rose by then. What remains of me...